Ali was the better mover, Jones liked to stand and move out of the way of punches using his reflex's. But if Jones chose to get on his toes and move he would be faster.
I'd say Muhammad Ali. Because you've said who was quicker on their feet, and Ali was more of a mover. He danced around the ring using his lateral movement and was ridiculously light on his feet for a heavyweight, while maintaining balance. Jones had quicker reflexes though definately.
Jones is a bit faster in my opinion. Both men obviously had a sick amount of speed, or more specifically: acceleration. What separates them mostly is that Ali spend a lot of time on his toes, at high, not top, speed, whereas Jones seemed to move more in bursts. At times when he really had to, and at those moments he was faster than Ali at his fastest. Pound for Pound, i think it goes to the Kentucky loudmouth. You'd think it's impossible for him to weigh over 200 pounds and still move around the ring like that.
I don't think so. Jones could never pull back from punches as quick as Ali did, even though this is bad boxing technique. Only Ali could lean back from punches because he had the reflexes that nobody else in the sport possessed. In fact, historically Ali's fighting style has been outined as the wrong style to copy by many fighters and trainers because of the simple fact that nobody in the sport has the reflexes. 1960's Ali was faster than Jones, hand and foot.
Dude you need to watch more Roy Jones, he didnt even hardly anticipate punches. He waited till a punch was thrown and moved out of the way. Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDWnMXzgeZo Not a chance. Jones had obvious and a significant handspeed advantage both in real time and p4p.
Hard to say, because I think there's two different types of movement going on with these two guys. Ali was all about dancing consistently and smoothly on the outside, too fast for anyone to keep up with while he was circling them, while Jones' specialty was in sudden, quick bursts of acceleration, whether he was using it to move in and out or side to side. To put it another way, Ali was usually going at about 75-80% of his max speed, and would turn it up to 90-100 when he felt he needed to. Jones would go along at maybe 40% and then would crank it up to 100% for a few seconds.